New Job Growth Could Be Taking Bite Out of Crime

NEW YORK — The current economic expansion has drawn some criticism on the grounds that many of the jobs it has generated pay poorly.

Some say, however, that a positive aspect of this development is that these jobs offer unskilled youths a chance for employment. As such, the jobs could be taking a bite out of crime.

David Birch, president of Cognetics Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., economic research firm, said 10 million new jobs have opened since the last recession ended in 1991.

Jobs for mid-level wage earners dropped by 3% in this period, but jobs for those averaging $12,500 a year expanded by 7%. Birch called it “great opportunities at the bottom.”

Curiously, in news accounts of the crime decline there’s little mention that the economy might have had an effect.

President Clinton credits the assault weapons ban and “putting more officers on our streets.” New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani praises New York’s finest--the police force.

In several big cities, though, crime and unemployment rates have tumbled together. Between January 1994 and October 1996, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said unemployment in New York dropped from 8.7% to 8.3% and in Los Angeles from 10.6% to 8.2%.

Roughly about the same time, from 1993-95, larceny thefts in New York plunged from 235,000 to 183,000, and in Los Angeles they declined from 119,000 to 108,000, the FBI said.

Many of these thefts were committed by inner-city youths.

“There is a direct and unambiguous relationship between low levels of education and high levels of criminal behavior,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said.

For young adults, said Robert Sampson, a University of Chicago sociologist, “being out of the labor force is linked statistically in studies to criminal involvement.”

Youths who commit crimes “are not stupid,” Harvard economist Richard Freeman said. “If you give them a good, decent-paying job with a future, they’ll take that. If you give them a low-paying job when they need cash, they’ll take that. If the next opportunity is to rob somebody or fence stolen goods, they’ll do that. They’re very work- and money-oriented and will take the things that are available.”

Sampson noted that there was not much difference in the racial makeup of criminals under 16 but older than that “it tends to sharpen and unemployment accounts for a lot of it.”

Unemployment among minority youths typically runs far higher than among white youths, as does the percentage of them behind bars.

Without minimizing the impact of improved policing, maybe some credit is due to others who are improving the employment outlook:

* To employers investing billions of dollars in on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs.

* To 18,000 businessmen and women who serve on local councils of the Job Training Partnership Act.

* To the Labor Department, which over the past four years spent $14 billion to train and place 4.3 million people in jobs.

* To nonprofit organizations such as the National Urban League, whose 114 affiliates train and place about 260,000 people in jobs annually.

* To the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurism in New York, whose founder, Steve Mariotti, after being mugged for $5, started teaching grade school children how to make money in business.

* To inner-city public school teachers for urging minority high school pupils to get their diplomas.

* To inner-city youth, whose entry-level jobs--whatever the critics say--often are the only opportunity to earn an honest dollar.